An extrovert, orator and loner

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As New Zealand wakes to news of the death of one of its greatest
prime ministers, Anthony Hubbard charts the career of David Lange,
the brilliant school boy who went from poor man's lawyer to
international statesman.

David Russell Lange, born Auckland, August 4, 1942, died
Auckland, August 12, 2005.

David Lange, a loner who played the wit and the
extrovert, led a government of radical reform that permanently
altered the political landscape.

Lange was a gifted orator who entertained and
charmed the voters while his third Labour government carried out a
free-market revolution. Rogernomics brought about profound economic
and social changes, as profound as any in the country's
history.

Two other initiatives of his administration have
had almost as large an influence on posterity. In foreign policy,
the Lange government's ban on nuclear ship visits caused a
long-lasting breach with the United States, the country's
traditional patron.

And the decision to allow Treaty of Waitangi
claims reaching back to 1840 caused a momentous change in the
relations between Maori and Pakeha. Treaty claims have become a
central political issue and will remain so for years.

Lange was a sensitive individual who as an
overweight schoolboy learnt to use wit as a defensive weapon. As an
orator he won people over with his warmth and his sense of humour.
Many sensed his neediness and responded to it, rather as American
voters first did with Bill Clinton.

Lange was an instinctual politician, Methodist
rather than Marxist, and not in any way methodical in his political
thinking. He once explained that he was a monarchist because he had
waved the flag and sang in a choir for the Queen during her visit
in 1953.

As a pragmatic politician with few fixed
beliefs, Lange could connect with many similarly pragmatic voters.
The wittiest politician in the country's history could, on a good
day, disarm friends and enemies. Tycoon Douglas Myers, a far-right
businessman and an ideological foe of Lange's, confessed he took
delight in reading the transcripts of the PM's post-Cabinet press
conferences.

Lange's strengths were also his weakness -
susceptibility to capture by more determined or more ideologically
committed colleagues, flightiness and a somewhat erratic judgment,
and an inability to build alliances. All these eventually led to
his downfall.

David Russell Lange was the oldest of four
children born to Roy Lange, a GP in Otahuhu, and Phoebe Lange, a
nurse. Roy Lange had a profound and lasting influence on his son. A
witty, liberal man, he practised a peculiarly Methodist form of
practical socialism or applied Christianity. Many patients from
this working class area could not afford to pay him, and Dr Lange
did not charge them.

Lange was large and exceptionally verbal, even
as a small child. He did not excel at school, preferring to coast
despite his formidable intelligence. Mealtimes at the noisy Lange
household - the surgery was in the house, and patients were
constantly ringing - sharpened his debating skills.

"I've never been in any situation since," Lange
says in Vernon Wright's 1984 biography, David Lange: Prime
Minister, "where meal-times were anything like as stimulating or
demanding as they were in the Lange household."

He took an early interest in politics - at 11,
he said, he decided he would one day be Prime Minister - as a means
of changing the world and for the verbal jousting. Lange listened
to parliament on the crystal set in his upstairs
bedroom.

Witty interjections delighted him. At a
political meeting the local National MP, Leon Gotz, whose German
name gave rise to unpleasant questions, explained that his name was
Frank Leon Albert Gotz, and the initials spelled "flag".

A heckler yelled, "Yeah mate, and like all flags
you're up the pole". Lange told Wright: "I think more than
anything, that's when I decided politics was on."

Lange took a law degree at Auckland University
and then went to London. He was deeply influenced in London by
Donald Soper, later Lord Soper, a Methodist theologian and
socialist. At the Methodist West London Mission, where Soper
worked, Lange met his first wife, Naomi Crampton.

In 1968, the newly-weds returned to New Zealand
and Lange soon built a reputation as a poor man's lawyer and an
exceptionally skilled courtroom barrister, quick on his feet and a
master of the plea in mitigation.

In 1977 he entered Parliament after winning
selection as the Labour candidate for the safe seat of Mangere.
Once again, his wit carried the day. As the last of 16 candidates
to speak, the heavily-built politician was introduced as "the
person who has had the longest wait of the evening". Lange shot
back: "And with respect, the greatest weight too, I
think."

Asked what new qualities he would bring to
Parliament, Lange replied: "Well, I'm a teetotaller."

Labour at that time was weak from its
devastating defeat in the 1975 election, and National Prime
Minister Robert Muldoon dominated New Zealand politics. Lange was
quickly identified as a saviour for his party and a match for
Muldoon. He later confessed that he was bewildered by his sudden
popularity.

He used to take refuge from the attention by
taking the train from Wellington to his home in Mangere - a 14-hour
trip on which he could be alone.

He quickly outshone Labour leader Bill Rowling
in the polls and in 1980 his supporters made a leadership coup. It
failed on Rowling's casting vote. Labour lost again in the 1981
election, its third defeat in a row, although it won more votes
than National.

Lange later said he was glad he did not win the
leadership in 1980: "I wasn't ready for it."

In 1983, he became leader and quickly tried to
change the party's anti-nuclear policy. He supported the ban on
nuclear-armed ships, but had little objection to visits by
nuclear-powered vessels. This caused a ruckus in the party, and
Lange had to back down.

When Muldoon called a snap election for July
1984, his government was split and the Prime Minister was deeply
unpopular. Lange, at 41, seemed a breath of fresh air and the
herald of a new generation and a fresh approach to
policy.

But the Labour Party was also badly divided over
policy, between neo-liberals headed by finance spokesman Roger
Douglas and by more traditional social democrats. These divisions,
however, were not public, and the party had papered them over by
issuing a bland election manifesto.

The story of Rogernomics - where Muldoon's
elaborate network of subsidies, regulations and ad hoc
interventions was overturned in favour of the market - is well
known.

Less well understood is Lange's own attitude to
the reforms. He consistently argued that the policies of his
government's first term were necessary. The country could not
afford to subsidise its main economic activity, agriculture. It
"could not continue to be run like a Polish shipyard".

But in a revealing interview with the Sunday
Star-Times in 2003, Lange also revealed his own uncertainty about
whether the specific reforms were the right ones.

"Oh, I had no idea," he said. "I knew we had to
change. I was never confident about the statements about this and
that and the other thing."

And he revealed he was concerned for his
personal safety because of the huge social upheaval caused by the
reforms.

"One of the things that used to haunt me . . . I
used to be, not scared, but apprehensive about the effects of the
changes on my electorate," he said.

"I always had the feeling that I was going to
have my house smashed or my office raided or that people would spit
and shout at me in the street.

"I used to go to the Mangere town centre and
walk about and test the waters each Saturday, and at this stage
Mangere had the highest unemployment and lowest income of any
non-Maori electorate in the country.

"And yet these people would greet me in the
streets - 'Hello Lange! Hello!' - while they were being sort of
kicked to bits."

As the revolution progressed, strains between
MPs and the wider party steadily grew. The anti-nuclear policy was
one of the few ties uniting Labour, and critics accused Lange of
using it cynically. At one point when interest rates and inflation
were sky-high, Lange admitted that anti-nuclearism "wasn't a bad
policy if you've been in a supermarket recently".

But the politician who had seemed a lukewarm
anti-nuclearist ended up as a international campaigner against the
Bomb. His speech at the Oxford Union debate in March 1985 was the
high point of his prime ministership and even of his political
career. It inspired national pride in New Zealand, and helped
cement the idea that New Zealand was standing up to the bullies of
the Western alliance.

It is also remembered, typically, for the shaft
of wit Lange loosed at one of his opponents - he would answer his
question, he said, "if you hold your breath for just a moment - I
can smell the uranium on it as you lean forward!"

This rising nationalist tide got a further boost
when Lange refused entry to the nuclear-capable USS Buchanan. As a
result, the US withdrew its security guarantee to New Zealand under
the 1951 Anzus agreement. Anzus had long been touted as the
cornerstone of New Zealand's defence, but anti-nuclear opinion
continued to strengthen in the country.

The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland
Harbour in July 1985 gave Lange another opportunity to ride the
cause. New Zealanders noticed that neither America or Britain
condemned France for blowing up the Greenpeace flagship.

The decision to allow treaty claims dating back
to 1840 was to have far-reaching consequences not necessarily
welcomed by the Lange government. Lange said the government had not
foreseen the flood of claims that resulted, covering the whole
country, nor their scope. "We didn't know what we were getting
into," he said later.

Rumours of a split between Lange and finance
minister Roger Douglas had begun to spread before the 1987
election, but were denied. In fact, there was a developing argument
behind the scenes. Douglas had suggested in April 1987 a programme
of user-pays in social services, an increase in GST and a flat tax.
Lange rejected it.

In the 1987 election Labour increased its
majority, a rare event for an incumbent government, largely as a
result of cross-over support from conservative voters.

Lange, who took the education portfolio, was to
bring in Tomorrow's Schools, a radical reform that gave power to
parents and principals on elected school boards of
trustees.

But within a few months, Lange and Douglas were
locked in a battle over economic policy that was to finish his
prime ministership and sink the Labour government. The specific
area of disagreement was over a flat-tax policy announced with
great fanfare on December 17, 1987. Lange cancelled it in the New
Year without reference to Cabinet or caucus. In 2003 he conceded
cheerfully that he had acted "quite unconstitutionally" in doing
so.

The second term of the Lange government was
marked by increasing dissension, growing economic trouble after the
sharemarket crash of 1987, rising unemployment, and mounting
unpopularity.

The battle in 1988 focused on the sale of state
assets. In November 1988 Richard Prebble, an enthusiastic
privatiser, said on television that the PM had been dictatorial,
comparing him with the hated Muldoon. Lange said later it was
"unbelievable luck" - Prebble had "sacked himself". In December,
Roger Douglas also resigned.

Even the anti-nuclear cause was no longer a
rallying point. On Anzac Day 1989, Lange gave a dramatic address in
the United States suggesting New Zealand should withdraw from the
Anzus Council. In effect, this would be a formal burial of the
Anzus Pact, although Lange was infuriated by the reporting of it as
"withdrawal from Anzus". At the same time a famous photograph of
the PM lolling in the grass appeared in Time magazine.

The nationalist gesture had blown up in his face
and he had lost his personal dignity. The United States was
furious, saying that it had been told the speech would be
non-controversial. In New Zealand, it was widely seen as an insult
and an offensive mistake, delivered as it was on the day of
remembrance of past military sacrifices.

Harvey McQueen, an education adviser in the
Beehive, wrote that from the Anzac Day speech onward, "I realised
the situation looked terminal (for Lange)".

All those who knew Lange remarked on his
personal insecurity. McQueen wrote in his memoirs, The Ninth Floor:
Inside the Prime Minister's Office, that "the measure of his
self-doubt surprised me. He felt he had achieved little. We would
argue with him, but he remained unconvinced."

Even McQueen, an admirer of Lange's admits that
he lacked the "inclination" to form alliances and
coalitions.

On August 7, 1989, Lange resigned as prime
minister. The Labour caucus's decision to re-elect Roger Douglas to
Cabinet, he said later, was the last straw. In November that year,
he separated from his wife Naomi. Soon afterwards, Naomi rang the
Dominion newspaper and named Lange's speechwriter, Margaret Pope,
as the other woman.

The 1990 election brought disaster for the
Labour government, although Lange was returned to the safe Labour
seat of Mangere.

Thereafter, he cut an increasingly sad figure in
Parliament. His day had passed, and he was not part of the Labour
leadership. He wrote an excellent column in the Dominion, - he was
a gifted writer - in which he criticised the Right. Critics said he
was rewriting history; had he not presided over the revolution
himself?

In 1996 he quit parliament and politics. His
valedictory speech was vintage Lange and his farewell was notably
warm. He was hailed by all sides of the House.

Thereafter, he continued to make occasional
forays into the public eye, although his health was visibly
worsening - he had had an angioplasty in 1988, heart surgery in
1995, a coronary bypass in 2001. In 2002 he revealed that he had
amyloidosis, an incurable blood disorder.

On each occasion when he seemed seriously ill or
close to death, there was a outpouring of public concern and
sympathy. In an age of political cynicism, Lange had become that
rare thing, a politician who was loved.